By MARY ANASTASIA O’GRADY

Venezuela is holding a presidential election, but the president hassquelched free speech.Suppose the country you live in is holding a presidential election andthe incumbent is running for another term. Suppose further that theeconomy is in bad shape. The ranks of the unemployed and poor haveswelled, the government is spendthrift, and the central bank is nolonger independent.The president takes no responsibility. He blames everything on therich. He says they are exploiting the working classes and don’t paytheir fair share in taxes. Fomenting class envy and resentment is hisstock in trade. Now suppose there are is no independent media.Welcome to Venezuela. Think the country can hold a fair presidential election?South America’s oil dictatorship kicked off the campaign season onJuly 1. Hugo Chávez, who has been the commander in chief of themilitary government since 1999, hopes to keep his job when Venezuelansgo to the polls on Oct. 7. Henrique Capriles Radonski, the formergovernor of the state of Miranda, is out to unseat him.Outside observers, including the international media, are treating therace like a real battle of ideas. But how can that be when there is nofree speech?Let’s put aside for a moment all the obvious problems. Forget aboutthe lack of an independent electoral body to ensure fairness in voterregistration, at polling stations, and when tallying ballots. Forgetabout how Mr. Chávez makes up rules as he goes along and then gets thejudiciary that he controls to bless them. Forget too that thestate-owned oil monopoly (known by the Spanish-language initialsPdVSA) is his campaign war chest, and the central bank prints money ondemand. For now, consider only the military dictatorship’s capacity tocontrol the message.The Chávez government has muzzled free speech. Photo: Getty Images.Mr. Chávez and his cronies in the Venezuelan elite know better thananyone that he is running a Ponzi scheme. The key to maintaining somesupport is keeping his impoverished constituents from seeing thelight, and that means controlling the narrative. Or as President Obamamight say, the ability to “tell a story.”Venezuelans don’t read much but they do watch a lot of television, soindependent broadcasting had to go. It wasn’t hard to get rid of it.Television stations require government licensing. In the Chávezeconomy, many television ventures also depend on governmentadvertising to remain viable. So it was made clear to theuncooperative that their permits would not be renewed or that theirbread and butter would be cut off.At one time there were three independent, nationalbroadcast-television stations and many regional broadcasters willingto criticize the government. Today, all largely have been silenced orexpelled from the market. Meanwhile, there are now at least fourstate-owned national broadcasters dedicated to polishing the image ofMr. Chávez and his Bolivarian revolution.One dissident broadcaster—Globovision—remains. But it reaches only thecities of Valencia and Caracas, and its permit expires in 2015. In2010, its owner, Guillermo Zuloago (who also owned two cardealerships), had to go into hiding when Mr. Chávez put out an orderfor his arrest on charges of hoarding Toyotas. (Chávez price andcapital controls have produced shortages of many things, so a cardealer holding inventory for delivery to customers can easily beaccused of unlawful hoarding.) Mr. Zuloago now resides in the UnitedStates.The government also imprisoned for a time Globovision’s second-largestshareholder and later stripped him of his property. Recently thecompany paid a fine of nine million bolivars ($2 million using theofficial exchange rate) for broadcasting news of a prison riot.Scores of independent radio stations also have closed under chavismo.Only a few willing to run some criticism of the president havesurvived. It matters too that PdVSA is also the largest contractor tothe private sector, which means the business community has had toknuckle under to survive.There are still brave reporters and opinion writers who dare tochallenge the status quo, despite the shrinking number of televisionand radio outlets. But they run great risks.According to Alberto Jordán, a journalism professor at the CentralUniversity of Venezuela who once supported Mr. Chávez, many have paiddearly for doing their work. Mr. Jordán, a columnist for theVenezuelan daily El Universal, wrote recently that under chavismothere have been 300 government-orchestrated court cases againstjournalists.In multiple cases—from reporting on drinking water contamination, theshortages of goods or anything that might cause “anxiety” among thepopulation—reporters have been put on notice that they could besubject to criminal prosecution. There is nothing like the threat ofdoing time in a Venezuelan cell to focus a journalist’s mind onstate-approved reporting.It is also worth noting that while independent journalists aresilenced, Mr. Chávez uses executive decrees to take over the airwaveswhenever he wants to give speeches. These famous discourses run forhours.So can challenger Capriles win the election? Perhaps. But if you’veever witnessed a demagogue running for re-election, you can appreciatehow difficult it will be without an independent media.Write to O’Grady@wsj.com